James Axler - Infestation Cubed

Suwanee dug her fingers into the wiregrass, using it as handles to pull herself up to her knees, but gnarled fingers reached down, snarling in her thick, ebony hair. She was going to scream again in protest, but a firm yank tugged hard on her scalp, follicles popping out at the roots, but most of it holding on as she was jerked to standing on her knees. She looked toward what would have been her tormentor’s face, but it was cloaked in shadow by the droop of his hood’s cowl. She couldn’t even see the glint of what she imagined were the cruel, merciless eyes of the man who handled her so roughly.

Though her head was held still by the leverage of her own hair, Suwanee could see the others around her, some obscured by the trunks of the pines, but most of them in a position like hers, cowed to their knees. She took a breath to release another scream, but fingers wrapped around her throat.

The snarl of her hair eased, and the man raised a finger to his shadowed lips, a universal signal for silence. Suwanee swallowed, wishing she could make out the features of the man holding her just tightly enough to keep her still, giving her windpipe plenty of room to suck down air.

“Please, no,” she whispered.

The shadow-faced man was not the only one of his hooded kind, and they appeared to be all sizes and skin color. Some of the strange marauders seemed to be women, as well, but none of them spoke, communicating only in hand signals at best, in violence at worst. Suwanee and the other refugees of the Appalachia River Basin had heard of these silent travelers, and how their numbers increased. Where they had first come as stalkers and thieves, making off with the young, unprotected or unwary, their numbers had increased so that few left their guarded communities without sufficient numbers. Somewhere in the muddy waters just off the shore of the hammock lay Suwanee’s weapon, a crudely made single-action revolver cobbled together from parts and what metal scrap the panhandle gunsmiths could accumulate.

Even if she had the gun, Suwanee wasn’t a combatant. Sure, she could hit a tin can resting on a log, but that wasn’t a person, and it wasn’t moving and trying to capture her. The Seminole refugee’s only saving grace was that these hooded men were not armed with guns and weren’t trying to kill them.

Suwanee didn’t want to think of what would happen if they succeeded in this capture.

The hooded attacker froze, his fingers still clutched around her throat, but he was involuntarily squeezing. Something was upsetting him and drawing his attention away from her.

Craning her head, the young woman saw a canoe moving with remarkable speed toward the shore. She lifted one hand, clawing the air in an effort to summon the people on board. The right thing would have been to warn them, to wave them off, but the trio of people in the scull were paddling with all of their might.

A strange, unnatural keening issued from the cavernous shadows of her captor’s hood, and it pointed an accusing finger at the people in the boat. Suwanee sucked in air as it released the death grip on her throat, and she collapsed onto the wiregrass, vision blurred from those fingers closing off the flow of blood to her brain. Suwanee wanted to scrounge for the knife she kept in her belt, a tool that she’d used to crack open shellfish or to clean fish, but the pain of the would-be strangle left her weakened, both hands clutching at the bruised flesh around her windpipe. All she could do was watch, brown eyes blinking to clear her sight as the scull splashed closer and closer.

She thought of the noise the raider made. Such an inhuman cry, issued from beneath the cowl, was not a good sign, either of the marauders’ intent or their origins. Things had been bad already, and it was likely that they were going to get worse.

A sandy-colored bolt shot from the boat, followed by a tall man who moved nearly as swiftly as the dog. Suwanee was about to utter another croak, warning the tall rescuer, telling him of the incredible strength these hooded fiends possessed. But then she saw the flex of his muscles beneath black skin-conforming fabric and the folded weapon on his right forearm. Dread landed in her gut as she recognized the legendary Magistrate’s weapon, the badge of office each of the grim, faceless lawmen wore. The black bodysuit he wore was unlike the shining, polycarbonate shell armor that the Mags were also famous for, but it was still the same fearsome dark shade of brutal authority as the official Mag armor.

Knives suddenly flashed from sheaths and the ring of naked steel being drawn was resounding. Curved, mirror-polished blades sprang quickly into view and the cowled kidnappers moved swiftly, taking cover behind tree trunks, as if they could anticipate the need to avoid the deadly weaponry the Magistrate carried. Suwanee struggled to roll over onto her stomach, to pull herself to her hands and knees to get away from the two warring factions.

In a battle between the Magistrates and these hooded thugs, Suwanee knew that she and her fellow refugees would only be the losers, no matter who won.

She’d rolled onto her side, still gasping for breath, when her assailant gave her a hard kick in the shoulder, knocking her flat on her back. He pointed a gnarled finger at her, and this time she could see the merciless glint of hatred reflecting on the shadow-faced man’s eyeballs.

Then the gunfire began, and the world above her turned into a maelstrom of violence and terror.

One thing that Kane had learned long ago was that his instincts were generally reliable. If there was a situation he stumbled upon, it was likely that the winning side tended to be the bad guys, especially when they were picking on women and frail old men. His shoulders wrenched and rippled with the effort of pushing the boat through the murky swamp water, his sharp, cold blue eyes locked on the struggle where he could definitely see that the group of attackers, though unarmed, wore a singular uniform hood that identified them as a cohesive force.

That was another thing the former Magistrate had learned. If a group had a uniform, they tended to be up to no good. He remembered his days when he wore the polycarbonate, bullet-resistant shell and merciless grim helmet as a Mag, and he recalled the things that he was not proud of doing under orders. There was the possibility that these men might not have been in control of themselves, perhaps even blackmailed into attacking others while their loved ones remained back home under threat, and Kane’s instincts buzzed with the possibility. It could have been wishful thinking, or it could have simply been colored by his recent encounter with Ullikummis’s minions and the familiarity he had with the mind control the Annunaki prince exerted over the New Order. He was about to leap from the boat, muscles steel-spring taut, when the scull coasted to within yards of the tiny islet’s shore.

Rosalia’s dog exploded into action first, its four legs and lighter mass giving it the advantage of clearing the still waters in a single bound, but Kane wasn’t far behind, determined not to let inaction be the cause of more lost lives. One of the hooded freaks pointed at him and an odd, strangled squeal, like a train engine skidding off the rails, assaulted his ears. All of the strangers drew sharp knives, as if they were possessed of a single consciousness.

That wasn’t good, nor was it good that each of these knife-wielding men had disappeared behind the trunks of nearby trees. As Kane landed on the shore from his initial leap, he let his knees buckle, reducing the shock of his impact on his body. Momentum kept him plunging forward, and he extended his legs, taking long strides. The Sin Eater was in his hand, launched there by a tensing of his forearm, ready to punch out twenty powerful slugs.